Facebook tightens rules on political advertising prior to 2020 U.S. presidential elections

Facebook
has disclosed new
political advertising rules prior
to next year’s U.S.A. presidential
election amid fears the platform is
going to be exploited.

Political advertisers will currently have to verify
their identity before being given a “confirmed organization” label.

It marks the newest in a series
of tries to handle incidents where users placed deceptive or inaccurate ads to
influence voters.
The rules will also apply to Instagram, which is owned by
Facebook.
Paid-for Facebook ads have become a preferred tool for political
campaigns and other organizations to focus on voters.

The platform antecedently unconcealed that
the 2016 Trump campaign had spent in
the region of $70m (£57.3m) on ads over the election period.

Facebook has been rolling out transparency tools
on a country-by-country basis ever since reports claimed that Russia-based
agents had uploaded content to influence voters throughout the 2016 presidential election.

Facebook has needed political advertisers in the U.S.A. to place a “paid for”
disclaimer on their ads since 2018; however the changes haven’t fully stamped out improper use.

The company recently banned the Falun Gong-linked Epoch
News outlet once a
report from NBC News claimed it had used incorrectly labelled pages
to push pro-Trump adverts.

Previously journalists at Vice News
managed to place ads
on the site purporting
to be on behalf of us vice president Mike Pence.

Sarah Schiff, product manager at Facebook, said the new rules were in direct
response to such loopholes being exploited.

“In 2018 we did see proof of
misuse in these disclaimers and so this can be our effort to
strengthen the process,”
she told the Newcastle Herald.

Aaron Reike, managing director at digital justice organization improvement, told the BBC he was
“surprised” it had taken the platform so long to implement such rules.

Facebook’s former chief security officer, Alex
Stamos, has advised it might be tough for the corporate to implement the
new rules across all its platforms.

“Instagram has a number of the same issues Twitter has in that you can have a pseudo-anonymous identity,” he told The
Verge. “So, ‘Is Instagram ready?’ is really a big question.”